Posted
by
timothy
on Thursday November 22, 2012 @10:05AM
from the world-governments-acting-as-usual dept.

hypnosec writes "ICANN is receiving more and more requests for new generic top level domains, and governments around the world are busy registering their complaints and objections with the proposed names. To date, more than 200 objections have been raised against proposed gTLDs, with Australia leading the pack with over 120 objections. Some of the other countries which are at the forefront of registering their objections include France, Germany and India. US and UK are near the bottom of the list. ICANN's "early warnings" about national objections to gTLDs serves as formal objections but it doesn't mean that these domains will never be signed off. There is always room for discussions and mediation that would allow prospective registrants to keep on pursuing their claims. Australia has objected to names such as '.baby,' '.app,' and '.beauty' among other. It has also objected to names such as '.sucks' and '.wtf,' stating that these names have 'an overtly negative or critical connotation.'"

I fail to see how that is supposed to be a reason for not allowing a TLD. Critique and satire are important cornerstones of individual and free expression, of - yes - critical discourse and public debate. Yes, not everything on the internet smells like roses and tastes like sugar. But meaningful exchange has never been without thornes and sometimes words have to be nasty to get through.

It is shamefull for a democratic government to be acting in such a way. A democracy hears its citizens, accepts critique and initiate change whereever reasonable. Censoring speech because you're afraid of people not praising you all the way - that's the way of tyrannies.

My first reaction was 'why would they complain about baby?' But I went and read the complaint. I guess I totally misunderstood the purpose of these gTLDs. I naively assumed they were just new extensions that everyone could use if they wanted. However the complaint about.baby was that Johnson and Johnson was reserving it for themselves. Well DUH!! of course you can't do that.

I can't think of anything more outrageous and distructive to the DNS system than allowing a bunch of useless new TLDs which only serve to enrich ICANN, phishers and name protection rackets.

I guess I should be appalled and dismayed when you develop a structure on the Internet which explicitly allows governments to weigh in on decisions and it quickly devolves into childish nonsense... Nobody could have possibly predicted this???..give me a fucking break.

Giving governments a taste of say/power over the happenings of the net is bad policy it only encourages governments to seek more power which only results in bad outcomes.

It might seem silly but those extra layers in the ISO model are getting to be more and more important to the design of protocols and operation of the network. Being sloppy, greedy and a total sellout (ICANN) instead of clever and concerned about the freedom and well-being of users is a recipe for disaster.

If Slashdot editors weren't just after cheap headlines they might have picked up on this:

Domain: Capitol

Australian objection: The useofgeographicnamesat the secondlevel:Thestring(.capital) is a generic geographicterm,and
DeltaMillLLCdoesnotappeartohaveproposedsufficientmechanismstoallowcommunitiesto
protecttheirnamesandreputationsfrommisuseatthesecondlevel.

So it seems that Australia is actually trying to prevent what many here fear, that there will be a ton of meaningless top domains which will force people either to register their sub domain to protect their brand/identity or have it exploited by someone else.

As for the giggles about.sucks wanna bet the company behind that isn't about protesting or free speech but "you want to prevent [your name here].sucks from appearing in search result, why not register it yourself, that will be 1000 dollars please. A tiny amount to the internationals, costs of doing business but feed a leech and it will only suck more.

I am with Australia on this and I think they should use their power to block ALL requests. Get the whole idea shutdown. Someone in government in Australia seems to be awake and the rest of world is asleep at the wheel as usual or to interested in just their own tiny section to see the big picture.

Australia has objected to names such as '.baby,' '.app,' and '.beauty' among other. It has also objected to names such as '.sucks' and '.wtf,' stating that these names have 'an overtly negative or critical connotation.'"

I call dibs on Australia.Sucks!

I mean, way to go Australia, that's thinking out of the box! If you prohibit negative and critical TLDs, then negative and critical speech will go away and everyone will be happy. I wish I had thought of that...